Final Conference, November 2015, Budapest

The Final Event of PATTERNS Lectures 2014/2015 was organised as a Community Meeting in cooperation with the International Conference Visualising the Nation – Post-Socialist ImagiNations, conceptualised by the art historian Edit András and realised through the collaboration of the following institutes: Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest; Municipal Gallery – Kiscell Museum, Budapest History Museum and ERSTE Foundation from 26 – 29 November 2015 at the Eötvös Loránd University – Faculty of Humanities in Budapest.

The event started with PATTERNS Lectures meeting on 26 November, which had the aim to bring a close-up view on the PATTERNS Lectures courses of 2014/2015 through a discussion between lecturers and PATTERNS Lectures Advisors– exploring the major milestones and challenges encountered during course implementation. Besides the reflection on experiences, the focus of the discussion was also put on the practice of teaching and research and the question: How do we want to continue from here?

PATTERNS Lectures was also present at the International Conference Visualising the Nation – Post-Socialist ImagiNations from 27 – 28 November. Previous and current lecturers of PATTERNS Lectures as guests, speakers or moderators. tranzit, the network of autonomous initiatives in contemporary art, also took the opportunity to attend the conference and was part of the community meeting.

In the evening of the last conference day, the members of the community meeting were invited to a guided tour through the exhibition Imagined Communities, Personal Imaginations – Private Nationalism Budapest at Budapest Gallery held by Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszá and at Kiscell Museum held by Edit András, curator of the exhibition. The exhibition puts emphasis on the imaginary aspects of the nation building process and scrutinises its mechanisms.

On 29 November, the community members had the possibility to participate in a post-conference tour led by András Rényi, Head of the Institute of Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and to visit two ominous squares in Budapest – Szabadság square and Kossuth square – sites of heavily loaded symbolic politics in recent Hungary.

We would like to thank all lecturers of 2014/2015 for their active participation in the meeting and for the great discussions we had!